A BLOG BY DAN HERMES

Mobile

Over a year in the making, it’s finally here: my book, Xamarin Mobile Application Development, is now available on Amazon!
Businesses looking to expand into the mobile space or to hone their existing mobile apps need a reliable way to approach cross-platform mobile development. The Xamarin platform provides that way.
This book is a hands-on Xamarin.Forms primer and a cross-platform reference for building native Android, iOS, and Windows Phone apps using C# and .NET. This book explains how to use Xamarin.Forms, Xamarin.Android, and Xamarin.iOS to build business apps for your customers and …

We’re proud to announce that PCR Essentials, a mobile app we developed for Android using Xamarin, was awarded a Davey Gold Award and a W3 Award by the International Academy of the Visual Arts (IAVA). Commissioned by Thermo Fisher Scientific and Grand Interactive, this app pushes the boundaries of the Internet of Things (IoT) by bringing real-time data directly from DNA-processing laboratory equipment into the hands of scientists on their mobile devices. The Davey awards are run by the Academy of Interactive and Visual Arts(AIVA). With nearly 4,000 entries from …

Software analysis changes with the times, and in these times that means going mobile. The first concept to be aware of is responsive design, the ability of an app or website to adapt to the size of the device it is viewed from. Without it, sites and apps look teeny-tiny on a phone and require a navigation approach called “squint and scroll”. The most important technology decision to be made in the building of a mobile app is: Do we go with a mobile web app, which is an HTML5 …

Our latest mobile creation just hit the app store! Commissioned by a Thermo Fisher Scientific brand, Life Technologies, this app pushes the boundaries of the Internet of Things (IoT) by bringing real-time data directly from DNA-processing laboratory equipment into the hands of scientists on their mobile devices. The app provides a suite of functionality ranging from training videos, a full e-commerce experience with lab product details, specs, images, and downloadable PDFs, and a specialized calculator for creating properly balanced solutions for use in the featured lab equipment. The pièce de …

Mobile is for business. Every firm with a web app must now consider the visibility and sales they are losing by not having a mobile version. Every new business or software product is faced with this same concern. Responsive design only gets us so far before it’s time to build a native app for several platforms. How do we build business apps for Android, iOS, and Windows phones …

One of the biggest problems with C# mobile development, platform-specific UI, is solved with Xamarin 3.
The greatest foe we face in our quest for cross-platform implementation is platform-specific code. Code that is platform-specific must be implemented differently depending on the platform, whether iOS , Android, or Windows Phone. Cross-platform patterns are the same regardless of operating system. Cross-platform code is sometimes referred to as shared code, or core code, as it is shared between projects for different mobile operating systems. Certain types of code lend themselves well to cross-platform sharing …

The International Institute of Business Analysis (IIBA) Greater Boston Chapter presents Dan Hermes spoke about How App Usability, Functionality, and Analysis are Changing with Mobile on April 10, 2014 in Wellesley, MA. Now we’re building apps for Android, iOS, Windows phone, and mobile web but is requirements gathering really any different? This talk will cover mobile mock-ups, usability, and important differences between PC web browser and mobile application analysis. Here is what the talk was about and the slides:

We bring our phones to work now and use them for everything. Facebook, Candy Crush, and Twitter are a great use of a smartphone but these devices are also helping us become more productive: email, file and document handling and editing, as well as contacts, calendars and integration with sales, financial, and other third-party business apps. This creates two things: opportunity and challenge. We want to seize upon the opportunity of best utilizing these devices to do our jobs while addressing the challenge of the resulting exposure of company data …

We take this for granted now but there is an important historical fact in the development of websites and web applications: They were originally designed for use on desktop PC monitors and laptops. The design of the website accounted for the size of the screen and the user interface (a mouse). So why do our apps and website need a different design today? Because people are fleeing in droves from desktop PC browsers and using their mobile phone for internet use instead. The older design accounted for the user making …

Lexicon Systems was named a Xamarin Premier Consulting Partner for mobile application development. Using Xamarin product suite, Lexicon Systems provides a cross-platform solution for mobile development using Microsoft technologies. Built upon the open source Mono and MonoTouch for iPhone projects these technologies allow .NET developers to create mobile apps portable to Android, iOS, and Windows phones. Microsoft partnered with Xamarin in the Fall of 2013, a crucial backing for this direction. We offer guidance, training, and development using Xamarin, and assist businesses nationwide with their shift to mobile.